


Heals All Wounds

by Canaan



Series: Ka!verse [3]
Category: Doctor Who, Torchwood
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Hurt/Comfort, Introspection, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-23
Updated: 2011-01-23
Packaged: 2017-10-15 00:25:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 13,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/155145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Canaan/pseuds/Canaan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I don't know how long it's been, but you haven't been grieving, just hidin'.  Now you have a chance to grieve properly.  Give yourself some time."  Post CoE; contains spoilers.  Major h/c, but has one egregiously bad moment in it.  Direct sequel to "Nor Am I Out of It."  original!Fifteen/Jack/immortal!Rose</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Waking Up

**Author's Note:**

> If you haven't read "Nor Am I Out of It" (which is recommended, but angsty and occasionally horrifying), here's what you need to know: The fifteenth Doctor and an equally-immortal Rose have drawn Jack away from years of the kind of self-harm only an immortal could consign himself to. The fifteenth Doctor is several inches taller than Jack, broad-shouldered and kind of rawboned. He has ginger hair just starting to grey and freckles, and he wears reasonably tight trousers and shirts with peculiar blousing sleeves that gather into the cuffs.
> 
> Beta'd by Aibhinn and Gillian Taylor, but I've made fairly drastic changes since then, so all the mistakes are mine.
> 
> Disclaimer: I don't own them; I'm just haunted by them.

"Do you sleep?"

Rose looks up from her novel at the quiet question. She's ensconced in the corner of a sofa with a reading lamp on, and she never heard Jack come up behind her. She smiles. "When I want to. At a certain point, I need to sleep _some_ , whether I want to or not. The Doctor did some testin', and it seems like fatigue poisons don't build up the way they would in a mortal. Brain has to have some down-time to process, though." By the time he'd been able to answer that question, it had stopped being a point of burning curiosity for her--more an interesting fact. She looks at Jack, thoughtfully. "Do you? Usually, I mean."

He comes around the sofa and sits beside her. "Under normal circumstances? A little. Twenty minutes here and an hour there, once or twice a week." He falls silent. She knows he's sleeping more than that, now. Every night, three, maybe five hours at a stretch. "Fatigue poisons, huh? Healing like any other poison . . . that makes sense, I guess. It's strange, now--I feel like I'm sleeping my life away. Which is even funnier because I don't exactly have a shortage of life."

She leans against his shoulder. He feels good and warm and human under her cheek, and if he's not the Jack she knows, he's still Jack. "'s the depression, Jack. When I was first stranded in the other universe and the Doctor said goodbye, I slept, afterward. Twelve or fourteen hours at a stretch, sometimes. An' after my husband died, I slept four hours a day, every day, for about three months."

"The Doctor's human regeneration," Jack says. She nods, remembering a beloved face, untamable hair, and a single heartbeat beneath her ear. She smiles, the grief long faded into love and memory. "Did you stay long, after that?" he asks.

Rose tucks a scrap of paper into her book and sets it on the end table. "I buried our children. I'd already had to fake my death an' take a new identity, and I'd had the time-hopper for years. After Celeste died . . . that was all the farther I could go." She'd regretted leaving the grandchildren, the great-grandchildren, but it was the right thing to do. It wasn't meant that children should have their elders live forever.

Jack smiles, faintly, and she knows more than a few sadly joyous memories are lurking in his own mind, warring with the fresher hurts. "It doesn't sound like running away when _you_ say it," he comments.

She looks up at him. "Felt like it, though," she admits. "But it was a long time ago. I don't know how long it's been for you, Jack--" He opens his mouth, but she presses a finger to his lips. "No, you don't need to say. I don't know how long it's been, but you haven't been grieving, just hidin'. Now you have a chance to grieve properly. Give yourself some time."

He kisses her fingertip. "I'm working on that," he admits.

"How's it goin'?"

He shrugs. "Early days."

She captures his hand in one of hers and gets to her feet. "Let's go sleep a while," she says.

"My bed's not big enough," he points out, not moving.

It's not, she realizes. Which says something, all on its own. "Captain Jack Harkness, in a bed only big enough for one?" She spares some attention to mend that fact. "Can't be havin' that," she teases.

"Not like I've been doing anything in it but sleeping," he points out, wryly. But he doesn't pull out of her grasp, slowly standing up, instead.

Rose stretches up on her toes to brush her lips across his. "'s big enough, now. Let's sleep. Worry about the 'anything else' when you're ready."

"Yes, _ma'am_ ," he concedes, quietly amused.

***

  
Jack sleeps like the dead, which ought to be funnier than it somehow is. He falls asleep with Rose's head against his shoulder, and her vibrant curves, gone alien and fascinating to him, pressed up against his skin in ways that would make sleep impossible, under any normal circumstances. He wakes up with the Doctor's cool form spooned around him in her place, breath just stirring his hair and a heavy arm draped over his ribs. The Time Lord's very genuinely asleep: When Jack shifts a little to see if he can squirm away without waking the Time Lord, the Doctor pulls him closer, like a living comfort toy.

He'll never accuse the Doctor of cuddling him like a teddy bear. He doesn't think he can take a "stupid ape" diatribe just now, no matter what spin the Doctor's current regeneration likes to put on that old saw.

Jack wonders if his sense of humor is impaired. There was a time that kind of reaction would have been highly entertaining.

Eventually, the Doctor stirs. It might have been an hour or more--Jack doesn't really know or care. After all, it's not like he's got pressing demands on his time; he hasn't even been out of the TARDIS since they brought him aboard a few weeks ago. "Morning, sleepyhead," Jack murmurs. His voice almost sounds normal in his own ears, which is its own special kind of surreal. He feels a flash of guilt and pushes it away.

"Pot calling kettle," the Doctor mutters.

Jack laughs softly, more amused than disturbed by his sleeping patterns this morning, and turns in the Doctor's arms. It's . . . remarkably good to wake up beside someone. Good enough he knows he'll feel bad if he thinks about it, so he doesn't: He drapes an arm around the Time Lord's waist and leans his forehead against a cool shoulder. "I find it ironic that we both sleep more than Rose does. The way she used to be able to lie in when we were young . . . " Jack remembers grunts of response and dirty looks from a pajama-clad blonde before she had her morning tea.

The taller man brushes a kiss across the top of Jack's head. "Nothin' special about me," he points out. "Perfectly ordinary Time Lord--and wouldn't it just make the rest of that lot squirm to hear me say that? Just one little change on the third DNA strand. Won't ever stop regenerating."

"And Rose?" Jack hasn't asked, yet. In a way, he's afraid to know. They always meant to protect Rose, and there's no protecting anyone from the dark side of immortality.

The Doctor strokes his back. "Definitely special," he says, with a small smile. "But she always was. The rest . . . we're not going into this morning. It'd take too long, and I had in mind to use the random function and see where we end up." There's a very deliberate pause. Jack waits for it. "You comin'?" the Doctor invites him.

Jack hesitates. "Not today," he says, not wanting to imagine the TARDIS's door opening. "Not yet." He thinks about the larger universe, with its dangers and wonders and impossible situations. It's not that it scares him. He's afraid of falling back down the hole the Doctor and Rose just pulled him out of. "Soon, I think."

The Doctor chuckles. There's no reaction beyond that, as if he didn't expect anything else. Jack's not sure if he should be upset or relieved; but he notices he cares about it, which is at least a change. "Well, when you're ready, lad," the Doctor agrees. He sits up in bed, regarding Jack from mild brown eyes that Jack's still getting used to. He smiles, suddenly, and says, "You're missing all the fun." With that, he gooses Jack and bounces out of the bed. Jack's still staring stupidly when the Doctor's pulled on yesterday's trousers and walked out of Jack's room with that ridiculous shirt in his hand.

***

  
There's no reason to get up, and the shock of the realization is significant, so Jack lies in bed a while, staring at the ceiling and waiting for it to make sense. They're meant to have _fun_?

Fun was the province of children and idiots. Long before he left the Time Agency, he'd stopped being either. There'd been no Captain Jack Harkness until that con--only a man without a name on the borrow from a dead war hero. Then he went and fell in love. It had stolen away his guile, given him his name, and ended his life. When the Doctor had abandoned him on Satellite Five, he'd sworn off love and heroism--not for the first time, and definitely not the last.

The word "hero" is ashes in his mouth. He still chokes on the taste, but the acid of it used to keep him moving and breathing on the days he wished he could die. The spacer in him has long since dried up and blown away, tied to a single ball of dirt orbiting an insignificant sun. While he'd waited on Earth for the Doctor and Rose, he'd lived on duty. By the time the Great War rolled around, he still fell in love, but it didn't rule him. The Doctor might be a knight errant. Captain Harkness was a military man.

He'd had to take another name during the second World War--there were too many Captain Jack Harknesses there, already--but it grated on him. He'd come out of that war a man who refused to change past a certain point. He'd taken his name back, stopped changing his clothes to suit the decades, and found he'd become a creature of duty.

Duty stays, while love comes and goes. Jack blinks, tring to let the background hum of the TARDIS soothe his mental disarray. What does _duty_ have to do with _fun_?

Not that he hasn't had fun--sometimes and in passing. He's enjoyed the meteoric glory of Torchwood Three's ever-changing staff of agents. He's laughed and joked and rushed into danger with those friends. Sometimes, it's left him feeling ever-so-briefly alive. But fun was never a goal--just a pleasant happenstance, like an unexpected one-night stand. There was always duty again in the morning, and the endless waiting for the Doctor, and adherence to what he expected the Doctor would want--even during the bleak times when he wanted to wring the Time Lord's fantastic neck.

Jack doesn't know who he is when there's no duty left. It's quietly terrifying when he thinks about it, so mostly he doesn't. He's spent years adrift, cast loose from the moorings he's known for over a century. The memory of the Doctor's arm around him is an anchor, but the Time Lord's words echo disturbingly for a long time after he's left the room.

How did Jack forget that the Doctor . . . was always in it for the fun?


	2. The Old In and Out

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta'd by Aibhinn and Gillian Taylor, but I've made some changes since then. All mistakes are mine.
> 
> Disclaimer: I don't own them; I'm just haunted by them.

The Doctor and Rose have been out for a couple of hours when the Doctor bursts back into the TARDIS, alone. The exuberance of this regeneration is contained behind a disgruntled look and a purposeful stride. Jack looks up from cleaning one of the secondary temporal stabilizers. He's sought out small tasks like this one to keep himself busy while the Doctor and Rose are out exploring: the things that need to be done, but never urgently. His habit amuses the Doctor, but Jack fancies the TARDIS appreciates it.

The Doctor pauses just long enough to say, "Jack, have you seen a phasic quantum agitator around here? Got to have at least three, but I can't for the life of me think where I last saw one."

It's a reasonable question--Jack's spent a good chunk of the last couple of months prowling the TARDIS attics and poking through seldom-used closets. "Um . . . " He racks his brains. "Storage number four, I think, but it looked older than you are . . . " The Doctor's off and running before Jack can finish the sentence. "You're welcome," he says, dryly, to the empty air.

Ten minutes later, the Doctor's on his way out again. "Doctor, those things are dangerous," Jack says. Not that that argument ever meant much to the Doctors he was most familiar with.

The Doctor grins. "Not to a Time Lord," he says, cheerfully. "Got to go. Rose is meant to be executed in two hours--she hates that. Doesn't do wonders for my nerves, either." He breezes out the double doors, leaving Jack staring after him, feeling vaguely like a cyclone's laughed in passing and waved.

Maybe an hour and a half later, the doors open again. Rose has an annoyed look on her face and a suspiciously empty spot behind her. "No Doctor?" Jack asks.

She gives a frustrated little growl. "No. Bloody fool's gone and got himself locked up by a bunch of savages--are they still savages when they've got this kind of technology?--who think he's an evil god, come to upset the natural order of things. Lucky for us, they also think you keep an evil god imprisoned, 'cos if you try to kill one, he just comes back nastier. Come to that, they might be on to something there."

Jack smiles a little, in spite of himself. "Does the 'natural order' maybe involve executing you?" he asks.

She smirks. "Well, if you mean did I stop 'em sacrificing a virgin to their gods, yeah. Why is it always the virgins, anyway?" She gives herself a little shake. "'Scuse me, goin' to need a few things to spring him." She heads down the main corridor. Jack spends two seconds thinking about it before giving the TARDIS's wall an apologetic pat beside the open panel and following Rose.

She ends up in what Jack always mentally labels the armoury: a storage closet full of bits and bobs intended to cause mayhem, many of them in disrepair. "For a man who hates guns," Jack says, leaning against the doorframe, "it's amazing how many of the Doctor's companions feel the need to carry them."

Rose gives him a lightning-quick smile. "Yeah," she agrees, acquiring a very serviceable sonic blaster and a stunner from a basket sitting under a workbench. "I've started teaching most of the new ones their way around a stunner when the Doctor's not lookin'. He pretends not to notice." A belt goes around her waist and the weapons go on the belt before she starts riffling through an assortment of other technology, tucking dribs and drabs into the suspiciously capacious pockets of her jacket.

"Nitro Nine?" Jack asks, watching a canister slide into a pocket manifestly too shallow for it.

Rose waggles a small packet in the fingers of her other hand. "Explosive. Fuses are dodgy, though--always use more than you need."

The air of competence about her as she equips is . . . really hot, actually. She once worked for Torchwood, too, Jack remembers. He'd feel better if she didn't need explosives to free the Doctor, though. They're a messy weapon. Messy weapons tend to mean messy situations. "Need any help?" he asks, reflexively, before he remembers why he doesn't go outside.

Rose looks up at him and grins, catching her tongue between her teeth. "Love the company if you want to come," she says. "But only if you want to. 's better with three, but we manage. And as draconian theocracies go, this one's only about a seven."

He laughs, mostly--but not entirely--relieved that he can stay behind. "I'll leave you to it, then," he says. "Call me if you need backup."

She taps the earpiece she's wearing. "Got your wriststrap in here," she agrees. She closes the space between then with two quick steps and reaches up, placing her hand behind his neck to draw him down and brush her lips against his own. He's surprised, for some reason, but finds himself kissing back. "Wish me luck," she says, cheerfully.

"Luck." Jack watches her walk back into the corridor and head for the console room.

Three hours later, neither of them's back, and Jack's heard nothing on his wriststrap. It struck him funny that the Doctor'd hung onto the frequency and codes (for what he rather expects is centuries) to begin with--there's been plenty of time for the TARDIS to have slipped a digit. Except that Jack can't really imagine the TARDIS's computers slipping a digit that way. Jack finishes cleaning the stabilizer and finds himself standing behind a bit of rail, watching the TARDIS's doors and brooding. He's not foolish enough to do more ship maintenance when he's in this mood--he's not interested in getting shocked.

They can't have been far from the TARDIS--Rose made it back fairly quickly. A prison break oughtn't to take this long. What if they're both locked up this time? Or what if the Doctor's hurt? Rose couldn't shift him on her own.

Jack rolls his eyes at the nattering voice of worry in his own head. _They're old enough to take care of themselves,_ he thinks, wryly. Then again, sometimes the Doctor finds himself in need of an extra pair of hands. _He's got his technological toys. She's got tools and distractions and a reliable gun. Does that make me the one with the fire extinguisher?_

He doesn't make it to four hours. He acquires his Webley and wraps the belt he hasn't worn in years around his waist to accommodate the holster. He finds some spare ammunition--a piece of luck he wasn't expecting--and another working blaster in the armoury. He doesn't know what's waiting for him out there, so he packs an assortment of small tools--from old-fashioned lockpicks to a sonic mimicker--and a flash-bang grenade into the pockets of his greatcoat. It's only at the doors that he pauses.

He squares his shoulders. He's not going to get himself in trouble out there. He's got a job to do and people he loves to look after--even if he's not entirely sure how they feel about him, anymore. The TARDIS, he thinks, approves--at any rate, there's a reassuring feel to the general sound of her. Jack tucks his key inside his T-shirt and sets his hand on her door.

***

  
They've almost made it back to the TARDIS when a voice shouts, "Halt, or I'll shoot!"

There's no question who he's talking to. Jack glances over his shoulder and finds the Holy Warrior's aiming a wicked-looking energy pistol at them. Jack's seen the damage those snub-nosed little pistols leave in their wake, and the thought of the Doctor or Rose taking one of those shots chills him to the core. Some part of his hindbrain insists that he's responsible for this--for them--even though, as usual, the flames behind the Holy Warrior are favours from the Doctor and Rose's party. People shooting at his Torchwood teams hadn't been one of his favorite things, but it never used to have this effect on him.

That was before he got Ianto killed.

He finds his feet have stopped of their own accord. Either Rose and the Doctor chose to stay with him, or their own feet had similar feelings. "We're halted," the Doctor says. "What did you mean to do now?"

The Holy Warrior glares at him. "This is all your fault. You brought the wrath of the gods among us. Evil and anarchy rule Talija, now, because of you and this woman who polluted the sacrifice." The pistol wavers between the Doctor and Rose and Jack tries desperately to figure where it's going to wind up. "We were wrong about you. You are no god: You are a demon, and I will send you back to hell."

Jack sees the minute shift in his eyes. It's enough to let him lunge for the Doctor, off-balancing him and landing them both on the ground--but "Holy Warrior" must be a ceremonial position: The guy's a lousy shot. The energy pulse goes wide, missing the space where the Doctor was standing and leaving a very large hole where Rose's heart used to be.

There's no force to an energy pulse; it doesn't knock her down. Jack stares, numbly, as her body shivers. He knows the glassy look in her eyes: She's in those fading, in-between moments, after the heart has stopped and before death, when the pain is so great the brain can't keep up and calls it pressure or heat or something else. The moments when the shock's so great that you can't move or react--but you're still aware. Her knees start to buckle, the natural prelude to her crumpling to the ground . . . until she locks them and steadies.

"Gods of my ancestors," the Holy Warrior breathes, staring at her. Jack's on his knees without knowing how he got there, watching with a certain macabre fascination as the hideous wound fills before their eyes, leaving nothing but charred fabric framing the pale skin of her left breast. The Doctor's stood and moved behind her, one large hand under her elbow as she recovers. Jack gets to his feet as the Holy Warrior says, "How can this be? Healing, life . . . these are gifts of the high gods." Jack moves to flank Rose on the other side--he might be as stunned as she looks, but his sense of theatre is intact, and nothing impresses these ceremonial types like a good show--and wraps his arm around her waist. She's not trembling now, and her flesh is inhumanly warm, even through his coat. "That means I . . . " The man looks at the pistol in his hand with something like horror. As if in slow motion, he raises it toward his head.

"Oi! None of that," Rose says, harshly. She doesn't sound herself, but the Holy Warrior can't know that. Those horrified eyes rise to meet hers.

"You messed up," the Doctor says, flatly. "But _that_ won't fix it."

The Holy Warrior shakes his head. "Then what do I do?" he wonders.

The Doctor makes a rude noise. "Put the gun down, to start." The man looks at the weapon in his hand like it's a foreign object. As it slips from his fingers, the Doctor reaches through the slit in one of those billowing sleeves and pulls out his sonic screwdriver. The pistol emits a few sullen sparks as it dies a final death.

"Look at the city," Rose says, nodding her head at the flames behind the Holy Warrior and never letting on how much of her weight Jack and the Doctor are taking. The Holy Warrior looks out on the anarchy he accused her of. "Seems t' me there's a lot out there that needs fixing. You don't get to take the easy way out: You've got work to do."

The Holy Warrior turns back to her. He drops, ceremonial robes and all, to one knee and bows his head. "Yes, Blessed One," he agrees. It's just as well he's looking down; he doesn't see Rose roll her eyes or Jack smirk, and Jack's afraid to wonder what the Doctor's face looks like in that moment. The chastened man stands and Rose makes a shooing motion with one hand. He takes his cue and walks back into the chaos and the night.

Rose shivers and Jack and the Doctor wrap her in a hug. She moans and writhes between them in a way that's less "injured goddess" and more "drunken co-ed," and Jack's so startled he almost backs away. "You're not in pain?" he asks, because that's so much more relevant than _"You didn't die?"_

She laughs, and there's a hint of darkness behind the sound that never used to be there. "Oh, no, not now," she agrees, breathily. "A bit giddy. Almost high." She forces enough room in their embrace to turn in the men's arms so she can look up at Jack as the hug resumes. "I hate it when that happens," she says.

He squeezes her tighter. "I think that's three of us. Knowing we're not going to die doesn't seem to matter--I think it was spinal reflex to panic."

"Sounds about right," the Doctor agrees. He reaches past Rose to grasp the back of Jack's head, firmly. Jack blinks. "And if you ever try to jump between me and a weapon again, I'll . . . " The man with all the words trails off, lacking a suitable threat.

Jack smirks. "You'll what? Kill me?" The Doctor's new eyes flash a very familiar fire, and he yanks Jack's head forward and kisses him, bruisingly hard. Jack's surprise gives way to passion in an eyeblink, relief fueling a sexual response he's grown unused to, these past months. It's an old friend he's happy to see again, and he rocks forward into Rose.

"Oi! Breathin's nice," she complains, giggling. It gets her breathing space and tears Jack out of the kiss. When he looks down, she's smiling with impish good humor and a certain amount of heat. "Besides, I'm enjoyin' this enough to want a room. Take me home."

The Doctor grins and catches them each by a hand, whirling Jack like a dance partner so he can drag them back into the TARDIS. Jack feels like a wallflower out of his depth, and the TARDIS might not be home anymore, but right now, in this moment, there's nowhere he'd rather be.

***

  
They can't die, none of them, and yet they're having oh-my-god-I-almost-lost-you sex like it's the most natural thing in the universe. Jack lets relief push aside the dark cloud he's been living under and stores small moments away, to be rationed out in future lean times:

 _\--the curve of Rose's bare shoulder under his palm--the Doctor's cool touch on his arms as the Time Lord slides his braces down--the way Rose tastes both as he remembers and of something not quite human--the feel of his own groan in his throat as the Doctor seems to remember exactly how to turn Jack to jelly with a flick of his tongue--the sway of Rose's breasts above him as she slides along his erection, teasing them both with a patience her younger self never used to own--the Doctor's unexpected grace in this body as his lips tangle with hers while he braces himself above her, the strength of his shoulders heart-stopping--the way the larger man's broad hands overwhelm the half-used tube of lube--the silken spill of Rose's hair across his neck--the subtly alien scent of Time Lord that remains constant, even when the Doctor's body has changed--_

A long while afterwards, they're lying curled around each other with Rose in the middle, for the sheer pleasure of being together and being alive. Jack's toying idly with her hair and the Doctor has one long arm wrapped around both of them, when Jack finally murmurs, "That would've killed me." It kind of pops out of his mouth without a real decision on his part, and it's a question, even if it doesn't sound like one.

Rose knows it. "It's different for me," she says. "You come back, Jack--I just don't die." The shock and the weird euphoria of her regeneration both seem burned out of her, and what should be a nerve-wracking discussion is somehow sleepy and comfortable. "Bit unpleasant, that."

They're comfortable, yes, but Jack's not so sated the thought doesn't draw a shudder out of him. "I think I'm familiar with the feeling," he admits. "Blown up, buried alive . . . "

"Oi, too gruesome for bed," the Doctor complains.

"Buried alive's not so bad," Rose says. She kisses the Doctor's protest away and Jack puts a hand on the other man's arse, happy to help distract a disgruntled Time Lord. When she comes up for air, she says, "Anything that bad and I just go all vague and dispersed and then end up back on the TARDIS."

Jack tries to imagine being . . . dispersed. He can't quite fathom it. "Sounds like a useful trick," he observes. "I just . . . go out. Eventually. I still come back even if I can't breathe, but if the heart and lungs are too compressed, I'm down for the count." It's Rose's turn to shudder, now, and he strokes the length of her body, soothing her. "It's a relief by then, beautiful."

"Imagine so," the Doctor mutters, darkly. "This your idea of pillow talk, Jack?"

Jack stills, remembering back long years to a soft, Welsh accent murmuring to him through post-coital drowsiness and then laughing. There's a thick, tight feeling in his throat, and he finds he's sitting up in the bed. The Doctor's hand is still on his thigh, and Rose has her fingers wrapped around his wrist. "Who knows?" he says, and hears strain in his own voice. "There hasn't been any for twenty-odd years. There hasn't been anyone--" his voice breaks, and he pulls away, embarrassed, "--anyone who mattered."

His feet find the floor. "Jack," the Doctor says.

Not even the magic of his name can save Jack this time. He doesn't stop to clean up, doesn't bother with clothes. "I'm out of practice," he whispers.

He's almost at the door when he hears Rose tell their lover, "Let him go, Doctor. Trust an ape this time, yeah?"

Jack feels the tiniest bit of tension leave his shoulders with that small mercy. He flees into the corridor and sets about sinking himself into the TARDIS's hidden depths.


	3. El Dia de los Muertos

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta'd by Aibhinn and Gillian Taylor. All mistakes are mine.
> 
> Disclaimer: I don't own them; I'm just haunted by them.

_Start with the most important thing_ , Jack reminds himself. _No getting sidetracked or letting them tell you it's not important. Better to feel like an idiot than a heel._

At the moment, being a heel bothers him more than being a murderer. That says something about his priorities he's trying not to look at too closely. It hasn't been unusual for him to disappear into the unfrequented parts of the TARDIS for a day or two, avoiding company. This time, his wristcomp insists, it's been almost four days since he left Rose and the Doctor in bed without an explanation.

He knows they're in the TARDIS--she sounds different in the Vortex than outside it--and finally finds them in the screening room. There's some movie with muppet-monsters--or are they meant to be aliens?--on the telly, but they both look at him when he comes in, the same concerned expression on their faces. The concern just makes him feel like a bigger heel.

"I'm sorry," he says, before they can tell him not to be. "I just . . . couldn't bear to be there. But I shouldn't have run out like that."

"You don't have to apologize, Jack," the Doctor says. "We understood--well, Rose understood, and she kept me from runnin' after you." He grins a little.

Jack pulls a face. "Yes, I do. For me, if not for you."

Rose smiles and pats the sofa beside her. "Find anything interesting this time?" she asks.

He shrugs and takes the offered seat. "A candy floss machine stranded in the middle of a room full of winter coats? Found a greatcoat there that looks like it'd fit, if I ever wreck my own too badly and don't mind cleaning sticky pink stuff off the sleeve. And I never did find the hothouse, but I suppose there must be one. Every room I went into had flowers."

Rose looks surprised. "Flowers?"

He resists the urge to make remarks about her hearing and nibble on her ear. "Vases of yellow flowers. Nothing I recognized."

Rose is smiling, but on her other side, the Doctor looks uneasy. "What, you've taken up gardening to pass the time?" she asks.

Jack chuckles. "No, but I _have_ bought a few people flowers over the decades, beautiful."

"Six-petaled flowers?" the Doctor asks.

Jack looks blank. "Maybe." He tries to pull up the image of a single flower in his mind. "Yeah, I guess. What, are they the TARDIS's favorite?"

The Doctor drums his fingers on his knee and shakes his head. "No. They're . . . Flowers of Remembrance, in English. Mostly, they're a funeral flower. When they aren't, they were considered a bad omen."

Rose elbows the Doctor. "Don't go all brooding on us, Doctor. If the Blinovitch Limitation Effect doesn't apply inside the TARDIS, I don't think omens can, either." Jack almost grins at Rose's knowing temporal physics . . . but of course, she's had a long time to learn. "Jack's been doing a lot of remembering. Too much, you ask me, but flowers of remembrance only make sense."

His momentary good mood fades. "I was thinking about Ianto," he admits. He manages a half-smile that he hopes isn't too pained. "The source of the current greatcoat."

Rose leans against him, resting her head on his arm. "The lover you lost right before you lost Stephen, yeah?"

Somehow, the matter-of-fact note in her voice makes the question easier to answer. "Yeah. I got him killed. I went up there thinking we could make demands." He remembers shooting at what looked like glass, never expecting the bullets to bounce harmlessly off it. "I was wrong."

"No plan?" the Doctor asks.

Jack grimaces. "No time. They froze us out so thoroughly that, by the time we forced our way into the mess, there wasn't any time." He sighs, and his eyes drift shut. Rose's arm sneaks around his waist; and, as much as he doesn't deserve the comfort, he can't quite push her away. "Ianto couldn't believe that we'd given them children, forty years earlier. That _I'd_ given them children. He wanted me to be better than that. And they killed him. They killed everyone in that building. I held him in my arms while he died."

The screening room goes echoingly quiet, the movie's soundtrack droning on in the background. Jack's eyes creep open, but the Doctor and Rose aren't looking at him. Their eyes are unfocused, and Jack's suddenly, painfully certain that they're each remembering holding someone dear as they died. After a while, Rose breaks the silence. "He wanted to be with you?" she asks.

"Yeah." Gwen had, too, but she was pregnant: He hadn't let them draw straws. He wonders, suddenly, if the child was a boy or a girl.

The Doctor says, "He believed he was doing the right thing?" Jack nods, his throat too tight to answer. "Then why are you taking the credit? Some things are worth dying for, Jack. You used to know that. Why do you keep trying to take that away from him?"

 _Some things are worth dying for . . ._ Ianto was so horribly calm when he'd realized there was no getting out and no way even to take the 456 with them. "I should have stopped it," he breathes. "Somehow."

"You're not a god," the Doctor says, sharply.

"And I don't recommend it as a hobby," Rose, says, wearily amused.

Against his will, the remark draws half a laugh from Jack's throat. "I still can't forgive myself," he says, softly. Rose holds him tighter.

"You may never," the Doctor says. "But you loved him. He chose. Leave him his dignity."

There's an ache in those words that stretches back into the Doctor's past. Jack starts to wonder . . . and then wonders if he already knows. The Doctor's an old hand at not forgiving himself, and the Time Lord's seen plenty of people sacrifice themselves in some cause of his. And if Jack knows the Doctor's even worse about feeling responsible for other people's deaths than he is, himself, he can keep silent about it. Maybe--eventually--if they tell each other often enough, they'll both believe the lie.


	4. Toast

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta'd by Aibhinn and Gillian Taylor; all the mistakes are mine.
> 
> Disclaimer: I don't own them; I'm just haunted by them.

"Mag bolts," Jack answers Rose's question. He's been elbow-deep in spare parts for months, on and off. He can all but walk the storage rooms in his head by now. He sips his coffee and considers the question. "Remolt couplings, if we can find them. Some good old fashioned electrical tape."

Rose makes a mild noise of approval at the last item. She pins the shopping list to the TARDIS's kitchen table with her forearm, her left hand occupied by a half-eaten slice of toast as her right makes Jack's additions to the list in biro. She taps the end of the pen against her lips and thinks.

She has fabulous lips. "You've got a bit of jam there," Jack says. It makes her swirl her tongue around her lips in search of strayed jam. "Nope," he says, managing a straight face, and shakes his head. "Here, let me."

Rose gives him amused eyes as he comes around the table, but holds her ground as he leans in and licks along her lower lip, aiming for the non-existent jam. She laughs, lightly. "Like you need an excuse?" she murmurs against his lips, angling her head to kiss him. It's a rude surprise when she pulls away abruptly and squawks, "Oi! What d'you think you're doing?"

Jack follows her line of sight to find the Doctor standing in the kitchen, pouring himself a cup of tea and munching on the remainder of Rose's toast. He swallows before he answers, "Havin' breakfast. While you two were in here gabbing, I've been recalibrating the energetic decompensator. It's hungry work."

Rose gets to her feet, her chair left lonely behind her as she advances on their lover. "You nicked my toast!"

"Didn't look like you were usin' it," the Doctor says, taking another bite. His look is all injured innocence, the effect slightly spoiled by the smile playing at the corners of his lips.

Jack acquires Rose's chair and settles there to watch them argue over a slice of toast like a couple of primary-school children. They were, he decided, fairly well married; the argument was that kind of comfortable. He and Ianto never had the time to get to that point. It had probably been upwards of half a century since he'd been comfortable enough with someone to steal their toast.

"Toast-thief!" As epithets go, it crosses some line between "ridiculous" and "fond," and Jack's not sure which side it ends up on. Rose can't help laughing as the Doctor holds the purloined slice over her head. She jumps for it, half-heartedly.

The argument makes its way around the TARDIS's kitchen. When he has a clear path, Jack gets up and crosses to the pantry. By the time Rose and the Doctor have come to some conclusion regarding strawberry jam and the ownership of warm grain products, there are crumbs all over the floor and Jack's made enough toast for both the victor and the loser--not that he can tell which is which. As he offers the plate to the pair, he wonders, "How long have you two been together?"

Rose chews her mouthful as the Doctor says, "Not real clear on that--I don't know how long it is for Rose when she's not here."

Jack does a double-take. He can't help it; they're so _together_. Rose catches the look smiles. "Forever's a long time, Jack. Even partners and best mates'd drive you up the wall if you really tried 'forever.'" She leans back against the worktop and licks a bit of jam off her thumb. "Think I spent about fifteen years exploring the Madeuling sector, last time, but that was . . . thirty years ago?"

Jack recognizes her vagueness with time--single years are hardly worth noting, except as people die around you.

"Twenty-seven years, eight months, and three days," the Doctor says. Rose rolls her eyes at his unnecessary precision. He ignores the look and washes down a mouthful of toast with a couple sips of tea.

Jack shakes his head, some emotion he can't quite identify nesting uncomfortably in his chest. "You seem pretty content," he remarks. "Why exactly did you come peel me out of my private little hell, again? I'd think one wounded human would just . . . complicate things." _I know you want me. I get that. I just don't get_ why _._

The Doctor shrugs. "It was time."

It's an answer Jack's heard before, and it's just not enough anymore. "Forget the 'why then?' Doctor. Let's try 'why, at all?'"

Rose scoots along the edge of the worktop to lean against him. "'Cos there was this Jack-shaped hole in our lives," she says. "Seemed like you might fill it."

The feeling in Jack's chest swells to an ache. He reaches down to squeeze her hand. He's not worth it . . . but they want him, anyway. Maybe that's love, after all. Maybe he'd look married, too, after hundreds of years. "I missed you, sweetheart," he says, softly.

"I missed you both," she admits. And then grins as she says, "And you're not gettin' rid of me that easy again."

The Doctor closes the few steps between them and kisses the top of her head--and then, much to Jack's surprise, does the same to Jack. The Time Lord's smile is wry. "So . . . where're we going today?" he asks.

Jack chuckles. "And here I thought you were the one driving."


	5. The Intimate Nature of Guilt

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which Jack backslides and has a moment of fail. **Caution** : This has to be considered dub!con. It's tender and loving and a little painful to read (thank you, wonderful BRs Aihbinn and Gillian Taylor!), and I don't _think_ there's much squick potential. But Yamx and I had a conversation about "Nor Am I Out of It" chapter two, where she argued it was dub!con because Jack was not in his right mind. I disagreed, there, but here . . . no, Jack is not in his right mind, and as such, cannot really consent or not consent.
> 
> Disclaimer: They're not mine; I'm just haunted by them.

Jack's shoulders slump like the weight of his greatcoat alone is dragging them toward the TARDIS's deck. He leans against the console room's wall, eyes glazed and face gone numb. The edges of roundels cut into his shoulderblades, even through wool, and that's good, but it isn't enough. He's still seeing three sets of eyes staring at him, knowing help will never come . . . knowing that he's killing them. There was no pleading for rescue, no begging him to change his mind--they'd just watched, clinging desperately to the cable that held the capsule in place. The one he didn't dare touch. He and Rose had evacuated the capsule, while the sapients clinging to the cable held out hope for some last-second reprieve.

 _"Not a good day," Rose says, her voice weary. The words are distant in Jack's ears, like someone else is hearing them and only telling him about it, second-hand._

 _"No," the Doctor agrees. There are small sounds as he fiddles with the control console. "And I think it's about to get worse," he says._

 _Rose sighs. "Yeah."_

The cable was all that had held the capsule to its precarious perch. Evacuate the capsule and the fragile balance would be broken, dropping the three unfortunate sapients who'd managed to cling to the cable when they were ejected. Rescue the three souls outside and disturb the cable. The moment that balance shifted by the smallest amount, the cable would slip from its fragile anchor, skidding right off the rocky outcropping and dropping the capsule full of people to the bottom of the trench.

The sick feeling in Jack's chest is anger and pain and grief, but mostly anger. He wants to punch something, but the only thing handy is the TARDIS's wall, and he wouldn't do that to her. He stares down at his fisted hand. His nails must have cut into it, because he finds himself watching blood drip from between his knuckles the way it dripped from Stephen's nose . . .

The Doctor and Rose are talking in low voices. The words wash over him like waves. There are hands on his lapels, trying to move him. He doesn't fight them, but he doesn't help, doesn't know what they want, can't see that it matters anyway. There's a startling sensation against his cheek. He almost wonders what it was.

 _"What's going on in there?" Rose asks. "Jack, talk to us. Please."_

 _"Jack," the Doctor says. "You're not the one who let them fall. If you're goin' to be angry at someone, be angry at me. I couldn't find a way to save them."_

 _Rose's voice is thin with strain. "It's no good, Doctor. Reason's not getting to him, wherever he is. 'm not sure he's even hearin' us."_

 _Time passes._

 _The Doctor says, "I need his permission." There's a deep, unhappy tension in his voice._

 _"Not right now you don't," Rose says. "An' I think I'm his next of kin. He trusts us, Doctor."_

 _The Doctor mutters unhappy syllables that don't bother forming words._

The cool touch at Jack's temples is irrelevant, except that it's soothing enough to annoy him. Pulling away would require a motive force he doesn't have. He registers the feeling of psychic intrusion, registers the Doctor's presence, and finds it's not worth his attention when he keeps seeing dead eyes staring at him, and blood. He'd watched. He'd had to watch. He wouldn't spare himself that.

There's a terrible, high keening in his ears, but he can't bring himself to cover them. It's unreal, like all the screams in his head as they go out, one by one. He's made of pain, and if he can just drink down enough of it, maybe he won't hear them any more.

 _The Doctor makes a strangled sound. "I could do without that trip down memory lane," he says._

 _"His or yours?" Rose asks._

 _The Doctor's voice is gruff. "I think some of those addresses are shared flats." He sighs. "Pretty standard depersonalization. His body doesn't fit right, and he's not anchored enough in his_ now _to find it's different to a couple decades ago."_

 _"Ianto?" she asks, and immediately corrects herself: "No, Stephen."_

 _"Got to put him back in his body," the Doctor says. "I can't think how without offending somebody, though. Probably me."_

 _That eerie sound is Rose, laughing. "Time Lord, you," she teases. "Always overlooking the simple ideas."_

Jack thinks he's moving, as much as he thinks anything right now. He knows his lovers are talking to him, but he can't make out the words and answering just seems like so much work. The air is cool on his skin and almost pleasant. He ignores it.

Pain lights up his world like a supernova. He gasps, reflexively, and becomes aware of cold. He can feel his heart racing raggedly and his feet start to go out from under him, but someone's got their arms tucked under his, and he finds himself floating back against a flat chest. Not that he can appreciate it properly with his balls trying to crawl up into his body. "Fuck!" he yelps.

"There's the Jack we know and love," Rose says, mildly. She snaps suddenly into focus in front of Jack, standing at the lip of--this is _so_ not a _hot_ tub at the moment--with a host of towels in her arms that he desperately hopes are warm.

"Back with us?" the Doctor's voice asks from behind him.

"Yeah," Jack growls, struggling against the shivers starting to race through his frame. "Let me out of here--I hate hypothermia. The dying's not so bad; the indignity sucks." The Doctor's less incapacitated by the cold than Jack, and he helps the human up onto the nice, warm deck of the Doctor's bedroom, pockmarked here by tiny roundels no more two centimeters across. "This didn't used to be here," he complains as Rose hands the Doctor towels.

"No," Rose agrees. She plies a towel across Jack's skin when he can't seem to keep one in his shaking grip.

He curses a little. "I could kill you for that," he grouses. "I know where you sleep."

"Good luck with that," she says, mildly. "Is your hair dry? 'Cos the bed's nice and warm, but I don't want to drag half the bath into it with us."

The Doctor touches the back of Jack's hair. Jack turns his head to snarl, but he's not fast enough. "Escaped, mostly," he offers, blotting the hair at the nape of Jack's neck with a towel.

"This is humiliating," Jack mutters.

Rose clasps his hand in one of hers and draws him toward the bed. "Seen worse. Into bed with you. Hate to see you catch somethin' nasty 'cos we were tryin' to shock you out of it."

Jack crawls under the bedclothes as the Doctor says, "Excuse me? Think the TARDIS lets that kind of thing on board? She has better taste--the only germs in here are the ones you two humans brought in with you." The Time Lord slips into the other side of the bed.

Rose undresses, folding her clothing neatly and setting it aside. "We keep life interesting," she tells him.

And cold, Jack thinks. Which is really his fault. "Sorry," he mutters.

"What've you got to be sorry for?" the Doctor asks. The Time Lord rolls onto his side and drapes an arm over Jack, stroking a thumb across Jack's ribs and watching him.

The regard is embarrassing, especially after the little detour into ice water on his account. He doesn't deserve this kind of consideration. He hates being a burden, hates being out of control, hates bringing death to the people around him. "Why did you bother?" he asks. "Why do you do this for me? There's just something wrong with me. Can't you see it?"

Rose's side of the bed dips as she joins them, her body heat a sharp contrast against Jack's skin. She hisses and mutters a curse of her own at the chill. He tries to draw away, but with the Doctor on his other side, there's nowhere to go, and she throws an arm around him and drapes a leg over his. He's too cold to appreciate what it does to her nipples. "We love you, you dolt. Wouldn't cuddle just any icicle."

Jack remembers being numb. He starts to drift. His breathing quickens and adrenaline makes spiky, jittery waveforms in his bloodstream. "Help," he whispers, the word dragged from him against his will. "I'm sliding away." He digs his nails into his arms where they're wrapped around him for warmth, focusing on the pain, trying to _stay here_. He's dined on pain so long it's not enough anymore.

The Doctor's eyes narrow, as if he can see the play of muscle in Jack's arms even under the duvet. Perhaps he can--Jack's never been entirely certain how Time Lord senses work. "Jack," he says, glumly, "we don't want to do that to you."

Pain enough to feel. Pain enough to blot out all his own shortcomings. Jack makes a strangled sound, half-laugh and half-sob. "Sorry," he breathes again. He doesn't deserve it, after all. Doesn't deserve any kind of surcease . . .

A light slap pops against his cheek. "Jack," Rose says, sharply, "stay with us, yeah?" She's sprawled half on top of him, looking intently into his eyes. She bends her head to kiss him and he finds he can't react. His lips are passive under hers. Then he jerks as she bites his lower lip hard enough to get his attention. "Thought I said to stay, yeah?" The words are teasing, but there's concern in her voice. Her knee on his hip isn't terribly comfortable. He keeps his attention on it. "It wasn't your fault," she says, more quietly. "You know that, right? Wasn't the Doctor's, either. Blame gravity--you'd be closer."

He turns his head to look away, but that just leaves him looking into the Doctor's eyes. The Doctor doesn't look happy--last-second rescues are, after all, his specialty. He seems to shake it off, at least for the moment. "You trust us, right?" the Time Lord asks.

Enough to take their opinion, instead of his own? "I can't change how I feel . . . " Jack protests.

The Doctor shakes his head. "But you trust us?"

There was a time the question hadn't needed asking, but they'd all aged separately and grown back together since then. Jack takes a deep breath, the chill beginning to recede into memory. He'd trusted them enough to come back to this life, but today he'd discovered he was only floating on the top of an ocean of guilt, ready to drown in it with each rogue wave. And there were so many waves, living the life the Doctor lived. "Yes," he heard his mouth say.

The Doctor nods. He rolls away, enough to reach one long arm out and fumble in the drawer of the bedside table. He comes up with a heavy length of soft fabric, worn where you'd tie the ends. "Close your eyes," he says.

Jack does. Rose slips off him and onto the bed, moving out of the way. The weight and pressure of the blindfold going on are a relief as the Doctor ties it over Jack's eyes. The Time Lord strokes a hand up his flank and ribs and then tugs at his shoulder and hip. Jack rolls over, relaxing into the heat of the bed as he hides his face in it. This is what he needs. It's not fair to his lovers that he's still this broken, but he trusts them. "I don't know what you ever saw in me," he whispers.

It's Rose who gathers up Jack's wrists, drawing his arms up over his head, and the Doctor who answers his question. "Your heart," he says.

It's not what Jack wants to hear. He'd pull away, but Rose's small, delicate hands hold him in a kind of bond that has nothing to do with strength. "You still feel," she says. "You still love. Jack--you didn't spend this long crippled by guilt because you're heartless."

He turns his face away from her. The Doctor strokes his back, and Jack's warmed up enough that the touch registers as slightly cool. Nothing else happens, except his nerve endings sing under the touch, holding him in the bed with them and refusing to let him go away. "Unfair," he says, after awhile, his body beginning to stir in spite of himself.

Rose bends forward to kiss the top of his head. "You said you trust us," she murmurs.

"Yes" would be inadequate. Anything else would be a lie. "I love you," he said, feeling pain swell at the back of his throat. The words feel like betrayal, even though he's not quite sure of what, except he doesn't deserve love, and somehow, it happens anyway.

They're tender with him, and he can't bear compassion. Fingertips arouse. Lips know all the sensitive spots on his body. A tongue tickles the back of his knee, and he squirms and rocks against the bed, reflexively. When Rose strokes his hair, it's too much and he starts to pull away, but she presses down on his wrists with her other hand and his body stills. "Enough of that," the Doctor says, and bites at the bend where Jack's neck meets his shoulder; and Jack knows he's going away again, but this time, he's not going away _from_ them, he's going away _with_ them.

Teeth threaten his vulnerable flanks and then leave what he expects are fairly impressive marks on his arse. He's moaning by the time slick fingers trail along the cleft of his arse, begging for the Doctor's touch with his body because his throat is thick and tight and the words get stuck. He draws one knee up and tries to push back, but there's a broad, cool hand at the small of his back and he can't go anywhere.

He yields: first his body and then, reluctantly, his mind. The Doctor's fingers press into him, and any time Jack moves, they stop. His body's almost shaking with need and there's something very calm and deep in his headspace that can't do anything but trust his lovers. He whimpers at the pressure on his prostate, needing more and unable to ask, not worthy of it.

It's a little like dying when the Doctor finally covers Jack's body with his own. Rose is stroking Jack's hair and the Doctor has him pinned to the bed, fucking him for the first time in this body. They've got him absolutely trapped and Jack feels . . . safe. He shouldn't feel safe. It's not right for him to feel safe, when he can't keep _other_ people safe. He tries to pretend he's not leaking tears into the damn blindfold.

He's not fooling them. "You feel terrible for feeling better," the Doctor says, voice soft in Jack's ear and harsh with pleasure and control. "You cling to the guilt like it's armour, keeping the cold, cruel universe at bay. Strip you naked and it's the last thing you own: guilt, swaddled around you like a second skin." Jack doesn't want to hear, but he's used to listening to the Doctor and he's restrained and gone into that headspace; and the words are sinking into his brain like smooth stones dropped into dark, still water. He's hovering on the brink of acceptance and the brink of orgasm, trying to out-wait a Time Lord, trying not to follow where the Doctor's leading. "It's not a lover, Jack. Let it go."

The cry wrenched from his throat is distant and almost not his own, but the one in his ear means something to him. Jack goes limp in his lovers' arms, letting go.


	6. Reclaiming Captain Jack

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta'd by Aibhinn and Gillian Taylor.
> 
> Disclaimer: They're not mine, I'm just haunted by them.

"It's different than what happened to you, Jack," the Doctor says. "I didn't know."

They're ambling through a market in Shemleu's largest port city, ostensibly to pick up any spare parts that can be had cheaply and might come in handy. In practice, they're killing time while Rose is having her hair done and getting a massage and generally indulging in a temporary escape from the long-term close-quarters she shares with two blokes who insist on doing bloke things at all hours.

"I believe it," Jack agrees. "You would never have left her with your--" _clone, duplicate, doppleganger_ "--human regeneration if you had." _Never have dumped them off without my knowing, without even letting me say goodbye . . ._

It's a long time past, though, and longer for the Doctor than for him. The Doctor shrugs. "The whole time I was mourning her, thinking she'd lived out her life with another of my regenerations--one who could give her what she wanted--she was immortal. And I had no idea until she stumbled across a weak spot in the walls between the universes."

Jack considers some Turilliam cross-over valves on a display. "It wasn't planned, then? You trying to get her back, her looking for you . . . ?"

The Doctor eyes the valves. "Too much trouble to convert," he decides. "I'm sure we can find a better match." They start walking again. "No. We'd both stopped thinking about it long since. When she . . . coalesced . . . in the TARDIS, I was worried about the integrity of the universe, but I checked the spot she'd been when she crossed over and it was holding. Not perfect, of course--some places aren't. But within acceptable parameters."

 _Coalesced_. It's such a visual word. It makes him think of that dream that's recurred so often over the years: Rose with a nimbus of gold around her, and stars behind her eyes, as if she were made of something her body couldn't quite contain. "She's tied to the TARDIS," Jack says.

The Doctor nods. "Didn't know that at first, but . . . yeah. Path of least resistance, like water flowing downhill. She and the TARDIS held the whole of the Vortex, between them, and a very young woman wanted the three of us to be together forever. She was tied to the TARDIS at that moment--it was easiest to make her life just another of the TARDIS's functions. No different to changing the furnishings, really. And Time Lords typically regenerate a dozen times, but it's an artificial limitation--remove that and you get 'forever.' You were the tough case, Jack."

Jack watches a green-skinned sapient with an attractive trail of blue scales running down his head and back and disappearing into the waist of his trousers. He looks at Jack from yellow eyes and smiles, invitingly. Jack gives him a regretful grin and passes by. "Because I was human? And not symbiotically tied to the TARDIS at the time?"

The Doctor's silent a moment. "Because you were dead," he says. "She wanted Captain Jack Harkness, alive, forever, and one of those conditions was already false. There was no easy route, only brute force: bring you back, and keep bringin' you back. Forever."

Just in the last few months, "forever" doesn't sound as bad as it used to. "Three immortals. Three special cases. Rose doesn't do anything by halves. No wonder you fell in love with her."

The Doctor smiles. "Why did _you_ fall in love with her?" he asks.

It steals Jack's breath away, the clarity with which he can remember putting his foot in his mouth, and Rose's just . . . accepting him. "'bout the same," he admits. "You were the immovable object. She was the irresistible force." He smiles at another sapient, purely for the pleasure of seeing her eyes follow him. "But then, I never did have trouble falling in love. Staying out of it's the problem."

The Doctor chuckles. "Life's too short not to take the risk, lad."

Jack raises his eyebrows. This, from an immortal Time Lord, and one who has not, at least in earlier regenerations, been good at accepting love?

The question must be plain on his face, because the Doctor says, "Not our lives, Jack." He gestures at the varied and vivacious sapients bustling through the marketplace. "Theirs."

***

  
The people in Jack's life are like the chapters of a book. Sometimes, he turns back pages to remember what happened--sometimes fondly, and sometimes with regret. Alice. Stephen. Ianto. Tosh and Owen. Suzie. Valentine. Alex. They form a paper trail back along his own timeline, if only in his memory. Only a few of those chapters aren't closed. Rose and the Doctor, of course, whom he'll see and live with and probably love on and off for the rest of their very unnatural lives. And Gwen.

She'd be fifty-ish by now. Her children won't be children anymore. Probably she's still alive, the offspring having kept her out of the field and saved her from the early grave most Torchwood agents find.

Jack leans against the shower wall and imagines her as she was. The first time he'd seen those big, dark eyes beneath soaking-wet fringe, he'd imagined them looking up the length of his body as she went down on him. He'd put the fantasy aside the first time she kissed him: He has a weakness for strong women, and that kind of love is dangerous. It brings loss with it. It breaks you, sooner or later. You keep it at arm's length, except for the occasional wank in the shower.

He drags his hand along his cock in long, rough strokes, twisting a little at the end. He'd always wanted to run his tongue along her lips and taste the gap in her teeth. She'd chased down Torchwood. She'd told him off. She'd made a mess on her first day and been willing to put her life and her dignity on the line to clean it up. That little gap between her teeth is the only thing keeping her from perfect, and perfection would be . . . oh, so boring.

Jack comes under the rain of warm water. He stands there for a minute before reaching for the soap.

He'd done the right thing for Gwen. He'd let her marry Rhys. He'd encouraged it. He'd wished them well. He'd been at her _fucking wedding_ , and if it weren't for Ianto's kind intervention, he'd have made a fool out of himself there. Love was more complicated than that, but the twenty-first century liked things simple. Rhys is good for her. That's about as simple as it gets.

All the same, he doesn't like to imagine her as fifty-something. And he wonders what they named the kid.

He left her defending the Earth. Maybe he should go back and help her with that. The TARDIS will always be here for him, and after all--it travels in time.

***

  
"Duck!" the Doctor bellows, running flat-out toward the little retaining wall they're standing below.

Jack and Rose duck, Rose grabbing the shoulder of the kid next to them--the one who'd pointed them at the "monster," even as he'd said that dragons don't exist. Jack risks the top of his head to keep his eyes on the Doctor and helps the Time Lord check his momentum as he tumbles over the edge and tucks in behind it with them. Two or three heartbeats pass before a burst of flame skims over their heads, stealing the air from their lungs and making them cough in the wake of its passage. The dragon goes by just after it, the draft from its wings all but flattening them.

The kid wheezes. The Doctor is on his feet again like he didn't almost get crisped, staring intently at his makeshift detector. Jack and Rose help the kid to his feet. "What is it?" the kid asks, his eyes wide.

"Dragon," Rose says.

"Actually," the Doctor protests, eyes glued to his readings, "it's mechanical. Just a machine."

"That happens to look like a dragon," Rose points out.

"And breathes fire," Jack adds.

"And you wound it up, didn't you?" Rose asks.

The Doctor doesn't look at her, eyes firmly glued to the little device in his hands. "Oi! What is it with you humans pointing fingers?"

Jack looks at the kid. The Mkruvians are hairless, with red skin with a pebbled, almost scaly, texture, but if he were human, Jack would guess he was fifteen. "What's your name?" Jack asks.

They're waiting on the Doctor's little device, they've just been dive-bombed by a dragon that can't exist, and Jack's making small talk. The kid looks at him like he's mad, but is too polite to say so. "Sardent. Sardent Accelo."

Jack grins. "Well, Sardent, the safest place in the park is probably as far from us as possible. If you plan to head that direction, now's a good time. I don't know what happens next, but I'm sure it gets worse from here."

Sardent gives him a wide-eyed stare. "But you're the only people who know what's goin' on. You're gonna stop it, right?"

Jack glances at the Doctor. "If it doesn't eat us first," Jack says, cheerfully.

"A little faith, here," the Doctor complains, never looking up.

"Yeah," Rose says, her eyes scanning the skies. "He hasn't got us eaten in at least a couple of months."

"Aha!" the Doctor shouts. "Power source is this way!" He grabs for the closest hand, which happens to be Rose's, and takes off running. Jack's right behind them, and Sardent's still dogging his heels. The farther they run, the less they need the Doctor's readings; all they have to do is find the people screaming and running and head _toward_ whatever they're running _from_. Past that, there's a very effective trail of paper cups and junk food, all of it dropped as sapients began to flee for their lives.

They find the dragon perched on the tallest tower of the highest roller coaster in the largest amusement park in this sector. "Who's controlling it?" Jack pants.

"Can't say," the Doctor says, looking at his detector again. "Power source is underneath that tower--might track it back from a signal there . . . "

"Or they could be in that control room," Rose says, pointing at the little booth in the roller coaster's tower. "The one the dragon seems to be defending?"

"It's not a dragon," the Doctor snaps. Jack grins.

Sardent takes his eyes off the booth to ask him, "Are they always like this?"

Jack says, "Pretty much. So how do we get to it without getting toasted?" The dragon's head swivels and then suddenly stops as it spots them. The mechanical beast shrieks and dives to attack. "Or is that an option?" Jack shouts as he grabs Sardent and dives for cover.

The dragon's breath separates around the boulder they're hiding behind, and apparently the Mkruvians have a fairly standard respiratory system--no massive respiration through the skin or anything, or the kid would've passed out by now instead of breathing in huge, pained gasps just like Jack's when the air cools again. The Doctor shouts from the next boulder over, "Jack, is there anybody still on that thing?"

Jack flips open his wristcomp and checks for life signs. He swears under his breath and pops his head up for a reality check. "Two trains stopped on the tracks. Almost eighty people," he calls.

"It already wrecked the Cyclonic Dozen and the Super-Shifter," Sardent says, with the casual tone of a teenager who spends his holidays in the system's largest tourist destination. "All those people . . . "

The Doctor says, "I could set up a pattern of constructive resonance. Bring the whole thing down. But not with eighty people on it. Guess we're going up."

A flicker of motion catches Jack's eye. "Fire in the hole!" Rose shouts.

Jack and Sardent split and go around the other side of the boulder, taking cover from the latest gout of flame against still-warm rock and seared grass. "How do you plan on getting there with that thing dive-bombing you?" he says. "You need a distraction, Doctor!"

"And that's you?" the Doctor snaps.

"That's really stupid," Sardent mutters.

"Shut it," Jack growls at him. "I have practice," he calls to the Doctor.

Rose shouts, "An' how often does it get you killed?"

Jack scans the area, looking for a good place to make himself very visible. "I never said I was good at it, sweetheart, I just said I had practice. You got a better idea?"

"It's a machine," Sardent shouts. "Aren't there guns that shut off all the bits in a machine?"

Jack knows the blank look on the Doctor's face that goes with the resulting silence. The kid doesn't even get a crack about guns out of him. "Refreshment stand," the Doctor says.

The words don't make any sense. Jack takes a quick look around their bounder and sees the Doctor pointing to a nearby structure. He also sees the dragon inbound again, headed right toward them. "Bogey at four o'clock!" he advises, shifting to share cover with Sardent again.

As soon as the dragon's past, the four of them abandon cover and run through the smoking topiaries toward the little not-really-a-building. They dive behind the counter and the Doctor takes a moment to grin at the kid. "Tremendous, Sardent!" he says. Sardent grins back. The Doctor begins looking around. "Focused electro-magnetic pulse emitter," the Doctor says, "unless someone's put hardening in a mechanical dragon. Haven't quite got what we'd need to make one, but kitchens are marvelous places . . . Jack, I need your blaster."

Jack puts one hand on it, protectively. "Oh no." Rose giggles.

"It's not like we haven't others," the Doctor says, exasperated. Jack sighs and pulls the blaster from its holster, handing it over. The Doctor pulls a few bits and bobs from the slits in his sleeves and begins fiddling the blaster with his sonic screwdriver. "Still need a few things. Jack, have a look around. To start with, we're going to need to generate a whole lot of power . . . "

Jack skulks around the kitchen to see what they can cannibalize for parts as the Doctor reads off a list of requirements. Rose peers over the counter to keep watch for mechanical dragons, and Sardent watches what the Doctor's doing with fascination. Jack gives the kid credit for a level head--when one of the dragon's subsequent passes sets the awning on fire, he knows how to operate the local variation on a fire extinguisher.

By the time the Doctor has the emitter cobbled together, most of their surroundings are scorched and there's no one else in sight except the shadowy figure in the roller coaster's control booth and the terrified people stuck on it. "Right," the Doctor says. "Now all we need is the dragon. Here we go."

"Thought you said it wasn't a dragon," Rose quips.

"Shut it," the Doctor says. He leads them back out of their dubious cover. It takes Rose, Jack, and Sardent together to haul all the power cells they've hooked up to fuel the pulse. Which is how they come to be standing in the open, still fumbling into position when they hear a roar and the dragon comes straight at them. The Doctor aims the emitter's muzzle, fiddles the machinery with his other hand, and fires.

The part where the dragon's wings and limbs go suddenly limp is anti-climatic. The part where an object in motion stays in motion, Jack could do without. Jack slings Sardent out of the way and almost makes it, himself, but the mechanical beast's tail swings around, striking his midsection with a force that shatters ribs and stops his heart.

***

  
He revivifies to a spectacular pain in his chest and the comforting sound of the TARDIS. The pain begins fading as someone shrieks, "He's alive!"

Jack blinks and waits for the room to come into focus. "See, lad," the Doctor says. "Told you he'd be okay."

"Be fair, Doctor," Rose says. Her face comes into view and she cups Jack's cheek in her hand. He smiles and captures it with his own, laying a kiss in her palm. "It was bad enough we had to take you out of there in a body bag, Jack. Not too big a surprise Sardent didn't quite believe us when we said you'd be all right."

"I'm always all right," Jack agrees, levering himself to his elbows. "Look what it did to my _shirt_ , though. I'm glad I wasn't wearing my coat."

Sardent steps up beside Rose, looking at the bloody ruin of Jack's shirt. "It killed you. It really killed you. And you're worried about a _coat_?"

"I like that coat." He looks from the kid to the Doctor. "Why're we in the med bay?"

"Sardent took a knock on the skull when we dodged," the Doctor says. "Thought I'd ask if he wanted to come along for a bit, but I wanted to make sure he wasn't concussed when he answered." He pushes away from the worktop he's leaning against and walks over to help Jack sit up on the medical table. His arm comes to rest behind Jack's waist and settles comfortably there. Rose twines her fingers in Jack's free hand.

Sardent does a double-take Jack recognizes at the way they touch. Jack says, "You almost died, kiddo. You're sure you want to hang around him?" He nods at the Doctor.

The Doctor says, "Oi! How's it _my_ fault?"

"I don't know," Rose says, "but it is."

Sardent gives them a tentative grin. "Lots of people almost died out there," he says. "And some of 'em did. But _I'm_ the only one who had any fun." Jack suppresses a grin. "I've got to tell my mum I'm okay, though, first."

"Mothers," the Doctor grumbles. "Travel halfway across the galaxy, and at the end of the day, there's always somebody's mother glarin' at you."

 _But some days,_ Jack thinks, _you manage to save just one mother's son, and somehow, it's enough._ Sardent looks worried for a minute, like maybe he'll lose his chance to see time and space because of his mum.

"We'll take you to tell your mum, anyway," Rose predicts.

The Doctor catches Sardent's eye. "Know me too well, these two," he grumps.


	7. Four Things and a Lizard

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta'd by Aibhinn and Gillian Taylor; all mistakes are mine.
> 
> Disclaimer: I don't own them; I'm just haunted by them.

Sardent doesn't judge them--they're aliens, after all. But his presence on the TARDIS makes them more circumspect. None of them need to sleep more than occasionally, but they've taken to retiring to someone's bedroom for a few hours when Sardent turns in for the night, taking the opportunity to make love or just hold each other close without absent-mindedly crossing some line one shouldn't, perhaps, cross in front of a fifteen-year-old. Tonight, Jack's curled between his lovers, Rose's head resting on his shoulder while the Doctor has an arm flung over them both.

There won't be many more nights like this, Jack knows. The thought brings with it a sort of absent-minded sadness, but he has responsibilities he's been neglecting. At least now, he has hope, too. "How long since he's been here?" he asks, finally.

Rose's hand strokes his chest, idly. "Hmm? Who?"

Jack thinks of all the small signs of another lover in residence as he lies between two sapients who know him, body and soul, better than they have any right to after the centuries. "Me. The other me. The one who's . . . your partner?" he guesses.

The momentary silence following his question stretches painfully, and Jack knows a moment of awkward dread as he thinks maybe, somehow, he read it wrong. The blindfold, the coat--all of it. "A while. A few years," the Doctor says, which is positively vague for him.

Jack relaxes again. "It's been strange. Since I realized I was living in a hole in my own life."

The Doctor goes up on one elbow so he can brush a kiss across Jack's lips. "Bit strange for us, too."

"Hard to watch, sometimes," Rose admits. "You told us you'd been . . . broken . . . after the 456. Don't think I'd really understood just how bad it had been, until we had to watch."

Jack sighs and curls his arm to hold her closer. "Sorry about that, sweetheart," he murmurs.

She shakes her head. Her hair tickles against his skin. "Don't be. I wish the horrible things hadn't had to happen. Wish we could have come for you sooner."

The Doctor strokes her hair back from her brow. "Paradox," he murmurs, watching them with sad eyes.

Jack chuckles. "How else? Can you at least tell me . . . " Jack thinks. What will tell him what he needs to know, without opening any more doors for disaster in this temporal tangle. "Tell me what your regeneration will look like," he asks the Doctor, "when I tell you about this little cock-up with the timelines." _When I tell you about Stephen and Ianto._

The Doctor settles to the bed again and wraps himself around them. "First time you see Rose with me," he says, which is hell and away a clearer answer than Jack had hoped for.

Jack's heard enough of Rose's timeline, at this point, to make some guesses. He sighs. "A while, then." He snorts. "Just as well I'll have things to keep me busy."

Rose's hand stills on his chest. "It doesn't have to be _now_ ," she says unhappily.

He turns his head to kiss her hair. "Yes, it does," Jack says. "Soon, now. Because I love this, and if I wait too long, I won't be able to leave." He smirks a little and asks, facetiously, "And then where will that leave me?"

"Very surprised when we pick you up on Ludrax IV," the Doctor says. Jack chuckles, and so, reluctantly, does Rose. "When do you want to go?" he asks, more quietly.

Jack thinks about it, and wishes he hadn't. "A few days," he says, and then answers the question the other way. "2010, 2011--see if you can get me sometime in there."

"Nobody appreciates my drivin'!" the Doctor complains.

Rose pats his arm where it's lying across them. "You're right," she agrees. "Nobody appreciates your drivin'."

The Doctor has to stretch across Jack to kiss her quiet, which presents opportunities of its own; and Jack lets himself forget again. For a while.

***

  
"Can I see where you work?" Sardent asks.

Jack finds himself smiling, against his will. "Even _I'm_ not sure where I work right now. Somebody blew it up. I have to look up an old friend and find out where she moved the offices." He checks his wallet to make sure his currency is from the right time period. "And whether I still have a job."

Sardent grins. "And if they saw me, they'd really try to arrest me? Just for not being human? That's crazier than building a mechanical dragon."

The Doctor frowns at Jack from across the console. Jack chuckles. "Probably," he says. "They've had some bad experiences. But they're getting better."

"Don't worry, Sardent," Rose says. "We'll pop forward a century or two and have a look around. Maybe not Cardiff, though--never did get the hang of Cardiff."

"It's an acquired taste," Jack mock-growls at her. He puts his wallet away.

The landing's a bit rough, but they usually are. Jack lets go of the coral strut he'd hung onto and leans back against it while he waits for the Doctor to make sure they're when he meant them to be. Rose leaves her station and walks over to him, grabbing his collar and drawing him down for a kiss. "Cardiff," the Doctor says, firmly. "2010. And it's raining."

Jack lets his tongue linger on Rose's. When she draws away, he says, "I'd be worried if it weren't."

"Will I see you again?" Sardent asks him.

Jack grins. "Never can tell. Life of a time traveler." But he gives the Doctor a look over the kid's head. They're going to pick up his older self at some point. Maybe they can make it while Sardent's still traveling with them.

"We'll see," the Doctor says, gruffly. He comes around the console and wraps Jack and Rose both in a hug. "Take care of yourself, lad," he murmurs.

"Working on that," Jack admits. When it gets him a matched set of glares, he grins. "If I screw up, somebody else is likely to do it for me."

"You have that problem," Rose agrees. She holds him tighter. "Try not to need it, though. I'll feel better."

"Do my best, beautiful," he murmurs, kissing the top of her head.

They break apart and Jack grabs his coat off the captain's chair. "Have fun, Sardent," he tells the kid as he shrugs into it.

Sardent laughs. "That part's easy," he says.

Jack buttons his coat and squares his shoulders. "You're goin' to get soaked," Rose tells him.

He turns to look at them--their tall Doctor with his arm around Rose's waist, same as he remembers them, despite the different face. He smirks and thinks of saluting, but they're past that, now. "But I'll look good doing it," he points out. The Doctor snorts and Rose manages a laugh that doesn't hurt too much.

Jack turns and puts his hand on the TARDIS's door. For just a moment, he fancies he feels his key grow warm where it hangs around his neck. Then the door swings open and he steps out into another fine Welsh night.


End file.
